Shocking and distressing

I’m shocked and distressed to note that certain rational, fact based, reasonable comments are disappearing from certain blog posts.  I guess that it’s evil to limit speech in certain contexts, while completely appropriate in others.  I guess it’s even better to lament the (false and unproven claims) alleged limiting of speech, while simultaneously engaging in the very act you decry.   But, I guess I just don’t go off on bitchy rants about made up things often enough.

Really?

According to Diane Feinstein Made the claim that the new tax bill and is the worst piece of legislation that has ever come before the house of representatives. Given the fact that the house of representatives passed a fugitive slave law in 1850, I find this claim a little hard to swallow.

Just curious

Isn’t it somehow illegal to offer an elected official “straight cash homie” in an attempt to influence them to vote in a particular way?    It seems wrong that someone could publicly offer two senators a total of 4 million dollars to change their votes and not run afoul of the law.

Jesus Matters

I saw this today and thought it was pretty good.

Jesus Matters.

What do we mean by this?

That we do not want to be a community of academically-minded religious professionals, nor a gathering of like-minded socially aware moralists, but a community of people that experience the transforming power of Jesus.  We want it never to be far from our lips, our minds, our hearts, or our experience.

Jesus matters because Jesus is God
Jesus matters because He rescues us from the past, present, and future consequences of sin.
Jesus matters because He adopts us into God's family
Jesus matters because He extends us freedom and grace
Jesus matters because He is the King ushering in His Kingdom
Jesus matters because He calls us into mission with the God who is already at work in the world.

Anger

Anger continued on past its usefulness becomes unjust, then dangerous…it fuels not positive activism but regression, obsession, vengeance, self-righteousness. Corrosive, it feeds of itself, destroying its host in the process.

Ursula K Le Guin

I've seen this quote a couple of times and it sparked something we talked about in Bible study last week.  We're doing a study around the seven "deadly" sins and the topic was wrath.  The author talked bout how "righteous" anger can turn into something else entirely.  I was struck by how much of the disgust and revulsion at the parade of public figures caught up in various sexual misbehaviors has generated  a tide of appropriate anger at the harm done, the lies told, and the misuse of power and authority.  Yet, I'm also struck by how much of the people expressing this "justified" anger seem to revel in it.  To almost use the lack of what they consider an appropriate degree of anger as a litmus test to affirm their superiority.  I wondered than, and still do, how much of what started out as righteous indignation and anger, is turning into something else entirely.

Seems like Ursula just might agree with my take.